


A Moment at the Beginning

by Gileonnen



Category: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: Choose Your Own Adventure, Gen, Genre Savvy, Interactive Fiction, Meditations on Narrative Causality, love blood and rhetoric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-22 05:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 6,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: "There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we'll know better next time."Rosencrantz and Guildenstern look for the moment when they could have changed their story. (A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game.)





	1. Autumnal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marginaliana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/gifts).



> This has become something of a passion project for me, and I will continue adding routes to the story even after the Trick or Treat 2017 exchange ends.

You shake yourself to alertness in a late-autumn forest. The last leaves fall around you, bronze and fallow and blood-golden. A chill wind stirs the light hairs at the back of your neck, and your spine prickles in sympathy. You feel cold in a way that has nothing to do with the wind or the slow descent of the sun. There is a taste to the air like snow and grave dirt. _Autumnal_ , you think. _Nothing to do with leaves._

You glance to your left. Your companion lifts his brows. Curious, you think, more than startled. Were you telling him something? You can't remember. 

What is your name?

[Rosencrantz](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394104)  
[Guildenstern](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393832)

> _To progress in the story, select one of the links at the end of the chapter. This is a choose-your-own-adventure story, and each chapter contains a choice that you might make (or might never make). It is designed to be read interactively, and it may not make sense if you read the chapters in order or view the entire work at once._


	2. Wasn't there a moment ...

The rope is rough around your neck. You can feel exactly how it will break you; you understand it with a precision that the living are not normally granted.

You lick your lips. Stupid thing to do, isn't it, when you're about to die? But your lips are dry, and for this too-brief moment, you're alive. You feel the cracks keenly, and feeling them pushes back the moment when feeling stops. You want so much to live. You have never wanted so much to live.

"Wasn't there a moment," you ask. Your voice falters and breaks. "Wasn't there a moment when we could have said no?"

"Chosen something else," says your companion. His voice is desperate; the gallows creak beneath his shifting weight. "Isn't there something else we could have done? Something else, so that it didn’t have to end this way--"

The player looks up at you. His hand is on the lever.

[You have been here before.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393676)


	3. Your name is Guildenstern

Yes, that's your name. You are never sure, later, whether you have remembered it or decided it.

"Where were we going?" your companion asks. If you are Guildenstern, then he must be Rosencrantz.

"Geographically, or metaphysically?"

"Does it matter?"

["Of course it matters."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393944)  
["What's the matter with you?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394268)


	4. "Of course it matters."

"Of course it matters--"

"Statement!" He grins at you, all white teeth and triumph. A golden leaf catches in his hair. You want to reach up and brush it away.

"This isn't a game," you say, more softly. You have glimpsed something, like a shadow projected on the back of your mind. Not quite a memory; only the indistinct outline of a memory that's come between you and the light.

Your companion pauses, too. He has the look of a hare who has sighted a hawk. His lips move briefly, but you have never learned the trick of reading them. "There was a messenger," he says. "We were sent for."

You hear a not-so-distant pounding, like the steady beat of a drum.

"A knocking at the shutters," you agree. "Early in the morning, the two of us still half-asleep. And a voice: 'Rosencrantz! Guildenstern!'"

One of those names is yours, by birth or by choice. The other is on the tip of your tongue. Your companion looks up at you, eyes golden-green in the dim light filtering through the trees. His lips part, but he says nothing. The moment feels as delicate as a skin of ice over a swift-moving stream. A breath might shatter it.

You fear you must speak or go mad.

["What's that sound in the wood?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393996)  
["Who sent for us?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394144)


	5. Drumbeats in the Wood

"What's that sound in the wood?" you ask. Your companion looks around, then shrugs. "I thought I heard something. Music." _Or something like it; music without a melody to give it meaning._

Shaking yourself from your thoughts, you nudge your heels into your horse's flanks and drive her further down the road. Drums mean people, and people mean conversation--questions posed and answered, the world bounded and made comprehensible through exegesis and diegesis. You could do with a little comprehension.

Where the road crests a little hill, there is a clearing nestled amid the brazen trees, and in that clearing is a makeshift stage. If (as some say) the whole world is compassed in the round of the stage, then the whole world opens up before you. At the center, a player in black hose and doublet kneels to a boy-queen with a golden crown, tenderly clasping her hand.

[Move on. You have business elsewhere.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394524)  
[Pause to watch the play.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394068)


	6. Pause to watch the play.

You draw your horse up short and swing down. You seat yourself on a weathered stone, drawing up one knee and clasping it in your hands. Your companion sits beside you with his hands folded in his lap. His gaze is rapt, even avid. "What play is this?" he asks.

Upon the weathered boards of the stage, the boy-queen raises up the princeling in mourning. Their eyes are wet with tears--his, thin and angry; hers swelling, bubbling over as her voice hitches. His grip on her hands becomes a vice. When she tries to draw away, fear making her quiver, he pulls her back and forces her to look him in his fierce grey eyes.

You have seen such eyes before, but you cannot remember where.

The princeling draws his sword. His body is taut with fell purpose as he advances. The boy-queen shrinks away with her wrists crossed before her face.

Your pulse quickens. You want to cry out to her. You want to leap to the boards with your keen blade drawn, as though she is a real person and her peril a real peril--

You stay on your rock. "It makes _Medea_ seem a sweet, domestic tale," you mutter.

At the sound of your voice, the actors freeze. They melt out of character like wax from a crucible, and all of the menace bleeds away. The young man in black sheathes his blade and gives a courtly bow. "An audience!" he cries. At the shout, a half-dozen players emerge from the edges of the stage, from behind the green curtains and upon the carriage roof, and even from a hatch near the back of the stage. One has a hand drum, and another a long wooden horn. "Well met, my friends."

You see suddenly that beneath his paint, he is not young at all. His hair is not blond, but greying; his skin is creased about the eyes. With laughter or cruel intent, you couldn't venture to say.

Your companion claps hard. "Bravo," you manage, a little dumbfounded. "This was ... not what I expected."

The player grins wryly. "That's theatre," he tells you. "A series of reversals, regressions, and revelations to make the inevitable appear unexpected."

"Cryptic."

"Do you think so? But you'll find, I think, that every play ends in tragedy sooner or later."

"Comedies," you counter. You're standing now, dwarfed by the player on his elevated stage. You can't remember getting up.

"The difference between a tragedy and a comedy is only where you choose to stop telling the story. And if the two of you can't pay a nominal fee for your entertainment, we will have to stop telling _this_ story here." The players begin to pack up. They close the curtains, heave up the stage and latch it into place. The little world folds into a wagon, with a patient draft horse waiting beside to bear it away. The boy-queen strips off her dress and wig and crown and becomes a gangling boy with painted eyes. He looks you over as though taking your measure.

"You weren't even performing for _us_ ," your companion says, getting to his feet as well. He has the look of a man protesting an injustice. "You were just--performing, and we happened to pass by--"

"You chose to watch, not to pass us by," the player says. "And unless you choose to pay us for our time, we'll try our luck with the new king of Denmark."

[Pay the fee.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394460)  
[Continue on your way.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394332)


	7. Your name is Rosencrantz.

Yes, that's your name. You are never sure, later, whether you have remembered it or decided it.

"Where were we going?" your companion asks. If you are Rosencrantz, then he must be Guildenstern.

"Geographically, or metaphysically?"

"Does it matter?"

["Of course it matters."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393944)  
["What's the matter with you?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394268)


	8. Tails

"Tails," you answer. This is an old game. You've done this before.

Your companion deftly flips the coin from his thumb, letting it spin in a shimmering arc before catching it and flattening it against the back of his hand. He meets your eyes and grins. Slowly, drawing out the suspense, he draws back his hand to reveal the coin.

Heads. "Hold on a moment," you say. "Let's try this again."

He flips the coin again. Again, it spins to the apex of its arc, then falls to land in his waiting hand. Again, he presses it to his hand, then reveals the coin with a swift flourish.

 _Heads._ You snatch the coin from his hand and examine both sides of it, but the coin is no cheat; on one side is a king's face, and on the other, a coat of arms. You flip the coin yourself, watching it spin. You see heads and tails flashing together. For an instant, the two of them swim and blur, until they become indistinguishable. Then the coin falls heavy on your palm, and you turn it over onto the back of your hand.

_Heads._

A chill runs down your back as you look at the king's profile. His face is stern but sorrowful, familiar in a way that you cannot describe. How many times have you seen that face before? How many times have you profited by it? "There was a messenger," you say. "We were sent for."

You hear a not-so-distant pounding, like the steady beat of a drum.

"A knocking at the shutters," you continue, idly flipping the coin again. _Heads. Heads. Heads._ "Early in the morning, the two of us still half-asleep. And a voice: 'Rosencrantz! Guildenstern!'"

One of those names is yours, by birth or by choice. The other is on the tip of your tongue. Your companion looks up at you, eyes golden-green in the dim light filtering through the trees. For a moment, you imagine coins laid over his eyes. The moment feels as delicate as a skin of ice over a swift-moving stream. A breath might shatter it.

You fear you must speak or go mad.

["What's that sound in the wood?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393996)  
["Who sent for us?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394144)


	9. "Who sent for us?"

"Who sent for us?" you ask. If you can answer that, you might at least be able to take a stab at where the two of you are going.

You probe your memory as the two of you ride. The warmth of the bed in the early morning; your companion's slow, steady breathing in the blue light. Then a pounding at the shutters and an unfamiliar voice: _Rosencrantz! Guildenstern!_

You remember the man's accent, as though he has swallowed the soft vowels of Wittenberg. (You remember Wittenberg with a keen ache that surprises you, the musty vellum smell of the libraries and the hollow toll of church bells in the evenings.)

"To Denmark," says your companion.

"To speak to Prince Hamlet, and lift his melancholy," you say. You don't remember the messenger saying it, but he must have, because you know to say those words. They feel right; they feel _true._

"Do we know Prince Hamlet?"

"We must, or why would they send for us to lift his melancholy?"

"Perhaps we're something else. Perhaps we're jugglers, or minstrels--"

"If we were, we'd have juggling balls or lutes or pipes--"

"--or perhaps we're players," your companion concludes smugly. "You hadn't considered that, had you?"

"Don't be ridiculous," you snap. "If we were players, we'd have ..."

The two of you have crested a hill, and at the top of that hill is a clearing nestled amid the brazen trees. In the clearing, the evening light slants down upon a platform of weathered boards. You cannot mistake what this is.

"... a stage," you finish, sheepishly.

[Move on. You have business elsewhere.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394524)  
[Pause to watch the play.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394068)


	10. "What's the matter with you?"

"What's the matter with you?"

"What is the nature of matter?"

"Non sequitur," you answer, smiling thinly. "One-love."

"Oh, very well." Your companion sighs and reaches into his belt pouch, pulling out a single golden coin. It flashes in the light, bright against the dull gold of the leaves. "Hmm. Heads, or tails?"

[Heads](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394308)  
[Tails](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394132)


	11. Heads

"Heads," you answer. This is an old game. You've done this before.

Your companion deftly flips the coin from his thumb, letting it spin in a shimmering arc before catching it and flattening it against the back of his hand. He meets your eyes and grins. Slowly, drawing out the suspense, he draws back his hand to reveal the coin.

Heads. You hold out your hand, triumphant. "That's two you owe me."

"Hold on a moment. Let's try this again."

He flips the coin again. Again, it spins to the apex of its arc, then falls to land in his waiting hand. Again, he presses it to his hand, then reveals the coin with a swift flourish.

 _Heads._ It wouldn't have seemed strange, if he asked you to wait--but in the pause between the first throw and the second, while the coin tumbled through the air, you could have sworn you felt the gears of probability grinding to a slow halt.

"Try it again." Not waiting for him to reply, you snatch the coin from his hand and launch it into the air, watching it spin. You see heads and tails flashing together. For an instant, the two of them swim and blur, until they become indistinguishable. Then the coin falls heavy on your palm, and you turn it over onto the back of your hand.

Heads.

A chill runs down your back. "It mightn't mean anything," you say, but you know in your marrow that you're lying. "If every toss of the coin is equally likely to be heads or tails--"

Your companion isn't listening, though. He has the look of a hare who has sighted a hawk. His lips move briefly, but you have never learned the trick of reading them. "There was a messenger," he says. "We were sent for."

You hear a not-so-distant pounding, like the steady beat of a drum.

"A knocking at the shutters," you agree. "Early in the morning, the two of us still half-asleep. And a voice: 'Rosencrantz! Guildenstern!'"

One of those names is yours, by birth or by choice. The other is on the tip of your tongue. Your companion looks up at you, eyes golden-green in the dim light filtering through the trees. For a moment, you imagine coins laid over his eyes. The moment feels as delicate as a skin of ice over a swift-moving stream. A breath might shatter it.

You fear you must speak or go mad.

["What's that sound in the wood?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393996)   
["Who sent for us?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394144)


	12. The Road to Elsinore

"Denmark," you say as you leave the players to their work. The light is fading as you return to your horse and swing into the saddle again. "That's where we're going. To lift Prince Hamlet's melancholy."

Ahead of you, the trees are growing thin. If you strain your ears, there is a distant cry on the wind that might be sea birds. You can't remember whether Elsinore is beside the sea--but you remember the name _Elsinore_ with a sharpness that's nearly painful. You grasp at the fragment of memory, straining to bring it into the clear light of recollection.

If memories were objects, perhaps they could be taken out and examined at leisure. If memories were places, they could be explored, canvassed, and mapped so that they might later be traversed safely. It would be a fine thing to write across a memory, _Here there be dragons_ and to know one need never look further.

 _Elsinore_ slips away from you.

You work a coin loose from your coin purse and flip it. You are not entirely surprised to see the king's face in your palm.

[Continue to Elsinore.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627056)


	13. Two Coins for the Players

You reach into your purse and take out two coins, pressing them into the player's hand. "There. I've paid," you say. "We'd like to see a show."

The player pauses to run his thumb over the face of the coin. A grin breaks slowly over his face. He licks his lips. "Well. This is another matter entirely. Alfred, put your dress back on. What can we give you fine gentlemen? _Phaedra_? The _Bacchae_? _The Rape of the Sabine Women_?"

"Don't you have anything less tawdry?" you ask. "What were you playing when we first arrived? I thought for an instant that I recognized the characters--"

"A new tragedy after the modern style. Not yet complete," the player answers. "But of course, we all know the end."

Alfred, still only half into his dress, suddenly clutches his throat and falls. The player grabs one of his fellows by the collar, pulls him close, drives a blade of air up into his ribs--and the other man gurgles and falls. A third man drinks from an imaginary goblet, his eyes locked on the player's, and then sinks slowly to his knees and falls across his queen. A gilt crown spins from his head, rolling across the ground to your feet.

You pick the crown up. It feels warm in your fingers, and surprisingly heavy. "A pile of bodies," you say drily.

"A bloodbath," the player agrees, taking the crown back. Your coins disappeared at some point, but you can't remember seeing him pocket them. "A massacre."

"And people keep coming back for that, do they? Even knowing how it will end." Your companion trudges forward and offers Alfred his hand.

Alfred lies motionless in the pool of his long skirts, hair curtaining off his face. A leaf settles on his cheek for a long moment, then blows away.

Your heart just has time to sink before he rises again to straighten his wig.

"They long for it," the player answers. "The certainty of it. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. There's a measure of comfort in that."

"But do they never wonder what would happen if things had gone a different way?" you press. There is an answer here--some deep, unfathomed part of you can almost grasp it. Not knowing is a wound in you that itches to be healed. "If you'd only stopped the story in some other place. When there was still a chance to change it."

"It's a player's work to make them wonder. To balance the audience on the knife's edge of catastrophe, and to make them wonder where their heroes will fall." He draws his sword and tilts it to catch the fading light. You know it's only a prop sword, but it gleams wickedly in the sun. "But at the heart of the mystery is one truth: no matter where you fall from the knife's edge, you fall onto the knife."

Your companion plucks your sleeve. "Guildenstern," he says.

"Rosencrantz." You aren't sure if it's a reply or a correction.

"We should go on. Let's leave them to their bloodbath and go on."

"There's something here," you say. "They know something they aren't telling us--"

"Anything they tell us will end unhappily."

The player smiles. It isn't an unkind smile, but it makes the hairs stand up on your neck all the same. "And so you'll stop listening here, before you learn anything you can't change."

"If that's how you want to put it," he answers. "You can keep the money. And your secrets."

As your companion pulls you away, a twinkling catches your eye. The player rolls a coin across the backs of his knuckles and onto his thumb. He flicks it up into the air, then catches it in one long-fingered hand.

You turn away before you can see whether it came up heads or tails.

[Continue on your way.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28394332)


	14. Business Elsewhere

A part of you is fascinated by the spectacle of the stage, with the evening light slicing across the boards in ribbons of gold, but you cannot allow yourself to tarry. You have been summoned; your road lies ahead. You nudge your horse's flanks with your heels and try to ride past the stage without interrupting the performance.

When you're almost clear of the stage, though, the dark-clad princeling in the center raises a hand to you. "Aha! A pair of new players!" he calls.

"I believe you've mistaken us for someone else," you say brusquely. "We're traveling to answer an urgent summons."

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," your companion supplies, as though saying them both together will prevent you from having to clarify which is which.

"Of course," the player answers. He does not seem particularly surprised. "We'll see each other again in Elsinore, no doubt."

You remember the name _Elsinore_ with a sharpness that's nearly painful. You grasp at the fragment of memory, straining to bring it into the clear light of recollection.

If memories were objects, perhaps they could be taken out and examined at leisure. If memories were places, they could be explored, canvassed, and mapped so that they might later be traversed safely. It would be a fine thing to write across a memory, _Here there be dragons_ and to know one need never look further.

You spur your horse onward into the thinning trees, leaving the players behind you. Ahead of you lies a duty that you do not understand, and behind you, a history you do not remember.

[Continue to Elsinore.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627056)


	15. Ophelia

"Hallo," you say cautiously. "I'm Rosencrantz, and he's--"

" _I'm_ Rosencrantz, and he's Guildenstern," your companion says, with a confidence that seems a bit forced.

The woman smiles. She has a guarded way of smiling, little more than a faint gleam in her eyes and a certain relaxation of manner. "What's the matter? Don't you remember your own name?"

"What's yours?" you counter.

"Ophelia," she answers with a curtsy.

 _Statement,_ you think, but she's got you wrong-footed with this ticklish business of names, and the victory has little savor. "Why do you say it isn't too late to turn back?"

"You didn't sound as though you wanted to be here," she answers. "You say the king and queen sent for you to ease Prince Hamlet's madness? My father hoped I might ease it, too." She looks out over the water, her gaze fixed on the waves as they curl and fold over the shore.

"That ... doesn't sound promising."

"You may hear that the prince is mad with love." She laughs, low. "My father would like that to be the case, I think, because then he'd know a remedy. It's the only way to keep a story from becoming a tragedy: make sure the hero finishes safely married. But the balladeers know that love is a murdering madness. A madman mistakes his lover for a swan, or a madwoman drowns her better-loved sister for spite. Either way, she finishes dead in the water."

By now, the sun has fully set. The sound stretches below you, an endless black abyss. It's easy to imagine it swallowing you up. You stand upon an island of light, your perception compassed within a few square feet before and behind the gate. There might be no one in the world but you, your companion, and dark-eyed Ophelia; even the guards are no more than chiaroscuro figures at the edge of the knowable world. There might be no moment beyond this moment, this threshold between one unknown and the next.

At length, Ophelia shrugs. "But perhaps you'll have better luck than I did." She presses a sprig of rosemary into your hands. It smells sharp and sweet and green. "Here you are. That's for remembrance." Then she walks away, up the road and into the fortress. As she passes through the gate, she vanishes into the encroaching darkness.

You find yourself wishing you'd gone with her. You're not sure whether you want to protect her, or the other way around.

You slide down from your horse, square your shoulders, and stride up to the guards at the gate. "We are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, come upon an urgent summons from the king and queen."

One guard sizes you up. He has a hollow-eyed look to him, as though it's been some time since he slept properly. The lamplight gives his face a sallow cast. "Which one are you, then?"

Your companion looks aghast. "Why, you don't think _we_ could be the ki--"

"He's asking if I'm Rosencrantz or Guildenstern," you say, rubbing at your temples. "You couldn't be the queen. You don't have the bone structure."

Well, which are you?

[Rosencrantz.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627088)  
[Guildenstern.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627088)


	16. Arriving at Elsinore

It's dusk when you and your companion arrive in Elsinore. The sun is setting behind you; your shadows spool out before you, painted queer, elongated shapes on the road.

You pass through the quiet town to the fortress that guards the sound. Your horses' hooves sound loud on the paving stones. Through every window, you see light: firelight dancing on the glass panes of mullioned windows, candlelight spilling through cracks between shutters and drapes. You shiver a little as you pass them by. Without the sunlight, the streets are bitterly cold.

There are no proper mountains in Denmark, or none so far as you can remember, but the castle commands a slight rise all the same. As you ride up the hill to the fortress, Elsinore drops away all around you. The last sunlight gleams on the black water of the sound like a path of gold.

"What do we say to them when we get there?" your companion asks. "'Hallo, we hear your prince has gone mad?'"

"We'll tell them were sent for," you answer. "That's what we'll say: We are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, here upon order of the king and queen."

"Because their prince has gone mad."

"More melancholy than mad. In a black humor."

"Glum," your companion pronounces.

"Exactly. What they expect us to do about that, I've no idea."

"It isn't too late to turn around," someone else says, and the shock of a third voice is enough to make you whip around.

Your eyes fix on a young woman with her arms full of autumn rosemary. She is dressed well, but her long, dark hair lies loose about her shoulders. It's difficult to make out much else about her in the fading light, but you're fairly certain that you've never seen her before in your life.

[Greet the girl.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627032)  
[Move along. The king and queen are waiting.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627128)


	17. Prince Hamlet

Faced with the prince who is, so far as you know, your sole reason for being in Denmark, you find yourself at a loss for words. "My honored lord!" one of you stammers; "My most dear lord!" the other follows close behind, little more than an echo.

"My excellent good friends," says the prince. He is smiling a queer, lightless smile, as though it is something he has practiced doing. You are uncomfortably aware that it's probably a smile at your expense. "How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?"

"As the indifferent children of the earth," one of you says, before either of you can ask whether you're playing a game.

 _Statement._ Triumph lights up Hamlet's eyes.

He harries you hard, after that--driving you back into the alcove with question after pointed, brutal question; naming Denmark a prison, a nutshell, a nightmare. He crowds you with rhetoric, slides past your evasions, pinions you upon the point to which he keeps inevitably returning: "Were you not sent for?"

"What should we say, my lord?" you entreat him. He is standing so close that you feel the heat rising from him in waves, as though he has a fever.

"Why, anything, but to the purpose," he counters. His eyes are bright, but you cannot think them mad. "You were sent for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to color."

["To what end, my lord?"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627164)  
["My lord, we were sent for."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627176)


	18. An Audience

You choose a name. Are you driven by conviction, or random chance? Has the coin of your identity come up heads once more, or has it shown an unexpected face? You can't be sure. But the guard doesn't know enough to gainsay you. He lets you through.

As soon as you enter the castle, a second pair of guards wheels to escort you. You and your companion pass through an antechamber lined with tapestries, each one telling a story you can't recall. Your companion pauses here and there to inspect this stitched hero or that crewel monstrosity, as though looking for the secret thread that binds them together. The same gold edges his sword and the dragon's claws.

When a guard clears his throat, though, your companion rejoins you.

You can't help feeling as though you are being marched to your death, with halberds shining pointedly on either side.

At last, you arrive at the throne room. A long, plush carpet leads to two thrones, which gleam as golden as the king's embroidered robes in the dim light. You find yourself wondering whether you are gazing upon the hero or the monster. "Welcome," he says, "dear Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern."

You exchange words. The precise nature of them escapes you; you mostly remember feeling foolish and travel-stained and suspicious, eager to please and increasingly certain that you will never be equal to the task set before you. _Draw him on to pleasures, and to gather so much as from occasion you may glean, whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus._ To learn the cause of Hamlet's transformation seems as impossible as to predict the motions of the clouds; to remedy it, as impossible as summoning lightning. But what is there to say, when a sovereign power deigns to cast its eyes in one's direction? "We both obey," one of you replies, "And here give up ourselves in the full bent to lay our service freely at your feet."

You both bow, severally and then in unison.

"I beseech you instantly to visit my too much changed son," pleads Queen Gertrude. Her eyes are welling with tears. You remember, in some dim part of your mind, that you have seen tears like those not long before.

As soon as you're out of the room, your companion turns toward you with a horrorstruck look. "We're out of our depth here," he says.

 _It isn't too late to turn back,_ the girl had said at the gateway. You're beginning to wish you'd listened--it's certainly too late now. "Things could be a good deal worse," you answer. You feel as though you are edging out over a perilous cliff, with a long drop below. (But of course, there are no cliffs in Denmark.) "We just need to put our heads in order. Prepare for the encounter."

"What, you mean a rehearsal?"

"No, I was envisioning setting a trap for a leopard," you snap.

"I should think they'd have told us if the prince were a leopard--"

"We're in quite enough trouble without your prodding at every little linguistic uncertainty!" You wheel on your companion; he blanches, shrinking back slightly under the pressure of your gaze.

You must look a wild animal, yourself. You sigh, then card your fingers through your hair. "Sleep might do as much for us as a rehearsal," you say, relenting.

"Well, which would you suggest?"

[A good night's sleep might help you think more clearly.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627140)  
[Perhaps a rehearsal wouldn't hurt.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627112)


	19. Rehearsing the Conversation

"Hamlet's transformation," you decide. "To review: changed, inside and out. Melancholic, removed, impervious to entreaty. The cause unknown. But the king is dead."

"We just spoke to him--"

"The _late_ king, his father, is dead." You begin pacing. You probably ought to know these halls, if the queen is right and you and your companion were boys with Hamlet, but you haven't the first idea of where you are. You choose a corridor and start walking. "His mother has married the _present_ king, Hamlet's uncle."

"Well." Your companion strides after you, and soon the two of you are hurtling together toward god only knows where. "That puts things in a different light entirely."

"Entirely," you agree.

"Why, if my father were dead, I should be outraged. Distraught. Probably even melancholic and removed."

"Impervious to entreaty?"

"As a lead box. As a coffin."

"Grim," you answer, but you find yourself nodding. "An encounter with mortality. A glimpse into the abyss."

"Have you ever?"

"What? Poked my head into the abyss?"

"It's only that I wonder--" and your companion pauses by an arrow-slit window. You can't see light through it. _It must overlook the sound,_ you think, because that's better than imagining that there's nothing beyond at all. "I wonder what you see, when you look over the edge. Whether anyone looks back at you, and into you."

"Don't be absurd. We're speaking of plain ordinary mortality, not some damp gully teeming with ghosts like midges."

"Not love-melancholy, then. That's some relief."

"I should hope not. We wouldn't be much use in remedying that particular malady--"

You cut yourself off as the two of you reach what is unmistakably a dead end. Your companion glances to the left and right as though expecting the passageway to branch, but the walls hem you in on three sides.

The both of you turn around together and find yourselves face to face with a man familiar-strange, dressed head to toe in black. "Do go on," he says. "I was so very much enjoying your conversation."

[Greet Prince Hamlet.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627072)


	20. Into the Castle

"Why should we want to turn around?" you ask.

"We've only just figured out where we're going," your companion puts in. It's almost agreement.

"As it pleases you," the girl says, shrugging. She presses a sprig of rosemary into your hands. It smells sharp and sweet and green. "Here you are. That's for remembrance." Then she walks away, up the road and into the fortress. As she passes through the gate, she vanishes into the encroaching darkness.

You find yourself wishing you'd gone with her. You're not sure whether you want to protect her, or the other way around.

You slide down from your horse, square your shoulders, and stride up to the guards at the gate. "We are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, come upon an urgent summons from the king and queen."

One guard sizes you up. He has a hollow-eyed look to him, as though it's been some time since he slept properly. The last sliver of sunlight gives his face a sallow cast. "Which one are you, then?"

Your companion looks aghast. "Why, you don't think _we_ could be the ki--"

"He's asking if I'm Rosencrantz or Guildenstern," you say, rubbing at your temples. "You couldn't be the queen. You don't have the bone structure."

Well, which are you?

[Rosencrantz.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627088)  
[Guildenstern.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627088)


	21. A Refreshing Rest

The two of you convince a serving boy to show you to your guest chambers, after assuring him more than once that you have them.

The room is dark, even after you light a candle. While your companion paces and tries out arguments, you go through your things, hoping that you'll find some trace of an answer in your belongings.

You find a feather, an acorn, a little lead ball, a length of string. They suggest many things about the physical properties of the universe, but little about how you came to this particular location within it.

That night, you sleep fitfully, and you wake feeling as though you had almost--but not quite--dreamed an answer.

Neither you nor your companion can remember how you came to these guest chambers, and so you take a turning at random, and then another, until you have gone from optimistically misplaced to hopelessly lost.

At length, you find yourselves confronted with what is well and truly a dead end. "You would think there would at least be a branching path," you say. "A left and a right passage, to give us the illusion of a choice."

As the two of you turn around to try another way, you see to your surprise that you are not alone in the hall. Before you stands a man familiar-strange, dressed head to toe in black. "Do go on," he says. "I was so very much enjoying your conversation."

[Greet Prince Hamlet.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28627072)


	22. "To what end, my lord?"

"To what end, my lord?" you ask.

Hamlet looks from one of you to the other. His gaze holds yours for a long moment, as though he is plumbing the depths of your soul.

Perhaps he is. You wonder if, when he casts his line into the dark waters of your absent memories, he ever finds the bottom.

At length, he sighs. "That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love--" He takes your hand in his. He looks as lost as you feel. You close your hand over his and hold it tightly. "Be even and direct with me: whether you were sent for, or no?"

"What say you?" your companion whispers.

You remember nothing before the road to Elsinore, and so you remember no time in your life when you have not been seeking after truth. You remember no time when you have not hungered for answers that the indifferent world could not give. You have no other answer to offer him but, "My lord, we were sent for."

"I have of late--but wherefore, I know not--lost all my mirth," he tells you. His voice is hushed, as though he is a penitent and you a confessor.

Perhaps what you feel is the close camaraderie of a childhood friend after a long absence; perhaps it's only the fellow-feeling that any two strangers might share, when they recognize in one another the same sadness. You want to cheer him up--not because the king and queen asked you to, but because his sadness moves you. "What Lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you, if you've lost all mirth," you answer.

Something shifts in him at that. You feel it where your palms are pressed together, some shiver like the birth of inspiration. "He that plays the king shall be welcome," Hamlet says.

He lets you go then. You wonder what idea you've given him.

You're almost certain it won't bring him peace.

[You have been here before.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393676)


	23. "My lord, we were sent for."

"My lord, we were sent for," you say.

"I will tell you why," says Hamlet. "So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."

"My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts," you say hastily.

"Why did you laugh, then, when I said 'man delights not me'?"

Your companion, all saints be praised, steps in to your rescue. "To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what Lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you ..."

Hamlet listens with an absent look upon his face. When your companion has finished describing the players, their stage, the princeling in black and the boy-queen crowned with gold, he nods just once. "He that plays the king shall be welcome," he says, and turns away.

As he goes, you realize that his doublet is the same cut and color as the player's.

You know in your marrow that his story will end in grief.

[You have been here before.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12474924/chapters/28393676)


End file.
